FWIW: Available for consulting

skef
skef Posts: 4
in Job Postings
To let folks know, I am now available for font technology consulting and development if any person or business out there has a need.

I wandered into the font world somewhat randomly, briefly tinkering with Libertinus and doing a lot of work on FontForge. I had a couple of great years at Adobe starting in 2022—and then a couple of other years—before I left in July. During my time there I overhauled the core of AFDKO and ported the CFF autohinter to Python. I also made solid contributions to the ISO spec (which will likely wind up in OpenType once the two are synced up again) and also to the W3C Incremental Font Transfer specification, for which I'm still an invited expert.

I am more or less assuming that I'll need to wander back out into some other area to make a living. AI tools make many more potential projects tractable, but also makes many orgs wonder if they need any help at all. And I'm certainly not a "name" in the field more generally. Still, I would love to be proven wrong; I very much like this corner of the technology world. 

If you have something that needs figuring out, there's a good chance I can help. 

Comments

  • SCarewe
    SCarewe Posts: 133
    It would be great if you could leave some way of contacting you, a personal website link or an email address.  :)
  • skef
    skef Posts: 4
    All, well, I've been at skef@skef.org for a few decades now, so that's probably easiest. 
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,228
    edited October 29
    What Simon said. Skef certainly does seem like “a name” in the field of programmers with real knowledge of fonts and layout.

    I have only worked a tiny bit directly with Skef (which was perfectly nice), but I think of him as being part of the very small community of serious developers who are also highly knowledgeable about fonts and the interactions between fonts and software—which are many and highly complex.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,228
    edited October 28
    Although AI can leverage such knowledge, it does not replace the utility of having somebody with domain expertise. Quite the contrary; people venturing into the fonts domain with AI help but without domain expertise seem to be making a lot of incredibly stupid mistakes. That’s why such products need an actual expert.

    (See: many of the attempts in the AI-generated fonts space.)
  • Roel Nieskens
    Roel Nieskens Posts: 222
    AI tools make many more potential projects tractable, but also makes many orgs wonder if they need any help at all.

    I wonder how a developer with no or shallow domain knowledge would be a better fit for an organization or company over you, even if they are masters at "I'll keep prompting till it kinda looks good"! I'm sure they'll find you for proper font engineering.

    And thanks for the work on IFT!

  • skef
    skef Posts: 4
    I suspect it's more that orgs aren't sure whether they need outside help or can have their current employees use AI help even if they're stretching a bit. Those employees may also be thinking and saying they can do whatever new work comes up. It's not necessarily clear what the new standards should be -- if AI can just fix problems when they become evident, maybe it's OK for new systems to be messier underneath.

    There are paths through this maze that allow things to be done faster and keep more traditional standards of quality and comprehension, but they can be "done" faster still without that. There won't be a robust sense of the true trade-offs in all this for years, probably, and the balance might shift as the tools improve. It's a genuine conundrum. 

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